This invention relates to automatic arrangement devices which make a music piece by reading out previously stored performance patterns of plural measures and combining the read-out patterns in a time-series fashion. This invention relates more particularly to automatic arrangement devices which can make or compose a music piece beginning with up-beat (hereinafter referred to as an auftakt music piece), in response to instruction to start making a music piece halfway within a measure, employing a part of a predetermined one-measure performance pattern as auftakt data.
Among automatic arrangement devices, there has been conventionally known such a device where various kinds of automatic performance patterns of one or more measures are previously stored in a pattern memory so that desired ones of the patterns are selectively read out, and time-series combinations of the read-out patterns are then stored in a performance memory as music piece data. Such an automatic arrangement device is disclosed in, for example, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/23,485 that corresponds to Japanese Patent Laid-open Publication No. HEI 4-234090.
According to the above-mentioned prior art arrangement device, the performance patterns are combined measure by measure, and thus it is not possible to selectively take out part of the performance pattern for making a music piece halfway within a measure.